Peter Winick explains why thought leaders often fail at enterprise sales: they use B2C marketing tactics when they should be selling to organizations. Marketing works for high-volume, low-ticket products. Selling requires different rules, cadences, and practices entirely.
Hey there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And today I wanted to share an idea, a thought, a reflection with you that I've had over the last couple of weeks due to some interactions and conversations with a pretty wide variety of clients. And it's the difference between marketing and selling as a thought leader. So clearly those are 2 separate functions that have a whole set of rules and cadences and best practices, etc. And as a general rule, when you're moving into the B2C space, that's marketing, right? It's high volume, low ticket sales funnels, etc., etc. Moving into enterprise, large-scale organizational sales, corporate sales, which is where we quite frankly as an organization spend most of our time working with our clients, that needs to be sold. And selling is different than marketing. And I think that oftentimes what I find in my work is lots of thought leaders apply marketing strategies and tactics that are really, really good as a marketing strategy and tactic when trying to sell. And it's the wrong strategy, wrong tactic, therefore getting an outcome that's less than desirable. So anyway, I would think about a little bit if I were you and ask yourself, are you actually selling into organizations or attempting to market to them? Very, very different set of activities that encompass those and very different set of outcomes. Love to hear your thoughts.
